n 1675 and 1680 constructed a glider of which a crude
picture has come down to modern times. The apparatus, as will be seen,
consisted of two rods with hinged flaps, and the original designer of
the picture seems to have had but a small space in which to draw, since
obviously the flaps must have been much larger than those shown. Besnier
placed the rods on his shoulders, and worked the flaps by cords attached
to his hands and feet--the flaps opened as they fell, and closed as they
rose, so the device as a whole must be regarded as a sort of flapping
glider. Having by experiment proved his apparatus successful, Besnier
promptly sold it to a travelling showman of the period, and forthwith
set about constructing a second set, with which he made gliding flights
of considerable height and distance. Like Lilienthal, Besnier projected
himself into space from some height, and then, according to the
contemporary records, he was able to cross a river of considerable size
before coming to earth. It does not appear that he had any imitators,
or that any advantage whatever was taken of his experiments; the age was
one in which he would be regarded rather as a freak exhibitor than as
a serious student, and possibly, considering his origin and the sale of
his first apparatus to such a client, he regarded the matter himself as
more in the nature of an amusement than as a discovery.

Borelli, coming at the end of the century, proved to his own
satisfaction and that of his fellows that flapping wing flight was an
impossibility; the capabilities of the plane were as yet undreamed, and
the prime mover that should make the plane available for flight was
deep in the womb of time. Da Vinci's work was forgotten--flight was an
impossibility, or at best such a useless show as Besnier was able to
give.

The eighteenth century was almost barren of experiment. Emanuel
Swedenborg, having invented a new religion, set about inventing a flying
machine, and succeeded theoretically, publishing the result of his
investigations as follows:--

'Let a car or boat or some like object be made of light material such as
cork or bark, with a room within it for the operator. Secondly, in front
as well as behind, or all round, set a widely-stretched sail parallel to
the machine forming within a hollow or bend which could be reefed like
the sails of a ship. Thirdly, place wings on the sides, to be worked
up and down by a spiral spring, these wings also to be hollo